


Sanctuary

by greygerbil



Category: Vampyr (Video Game)
Genre: Ekon Blood Gets Skals Drunk, M/M, Nightmares, Overstimulation, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, mention of past sexual abuse, untreated PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-25 21:29:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17733005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/pseuds/greygerbil
Summary: Geoffrey never thought he'd be sleeping with the Skal, either, so perhaps it shouldn't surprise him when they end up sharing more than a bed, like the stories of the old and new scars twisting their minds. Yes, he's a likeable monster, that Sean Hampton, which is a worrying thought.





	Sanctuary

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scorpiod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiod/gifts).



> Hi, I hope your Chocolate Box has been full! This is such an interesting pairing I couldn't resist but try my hand at it. This story is a bit smut-heavy, but I hope that's okay...

Before Reid had left the city, he’d told Geoffrey in no uncertain terms that there were two vampires in London that he was not to put his hands on without a very good reason, and Geoffrey had spat in his face that he took no orders from Reid, but indeed had still heeded them so far. One was Swansea, obviously, and to know Reid’s blood would now connect them for the rest of their undead lives was a punishment for both of them. The other creature was the one who had been suspected of having caused the massacre at the hospital that had first brought Geoffrey to Pembroke.

Sean Hampton was a Skal, or something of that make. Like overripe fruit, his skin was always split and bruised, and eyes the pale yellow of a cold winter day’s sun were made brighter by the deep shadows around them. He had no claws, though, no missing chunks of flesh, no slurred speech or slow mind. Jonathan had created a new sort of monster which had politely addressed Geoffrey as Mr. McCullum the first time they had met and steadfastly ignored the ugly glances Geoffrey had thrown him.

Because he had already failed to stand up to Reid’s rage once, Geoffrey did not break the Skal’s neck and throw him onto a pyre, as was his first instinct after hearing that he had a house full of homeless people few would miss at his disposal, a recipe for disaster if he’d ever heard one. Instead, Geoffrey had asked around the East End, tried to sniff out the catch, the stories of missing men and women around the shelter, drained bodies in the river downstream from the Dawson & Dawson warehouse, or even just of crimes Sean Hampton had committed before he’d become a saint, for the particul evil that leeches turned to was often born out of some seed inherent in their human mind, Geoffrey had found.

However, nothing had come to light but a sad story of an abandoned baby boy and a distasteful tale of a rotten priest. The worst anyone seemed to be able to say about Sean Hampton was that he always looked quite sad and had a habit of weeping over the cruelty of the world, which should have branded him as weak in a part of town as rough as this, but in the end had only heightened the mystery surrounding his person, feeding into the legend of the Sad Saint.

Geoffrey still kept up a route past the night asylum to remind Sean he was being watched. Twice a week or three times, he would walk into the shelter and greet Sean, who always welcomed him kindly, as if he could not see the hand Geoffrey kept on the pommel of his sword.

One cold evening, he entered and saw Sean hauling crates of supplies up the metal stairs.

“Mr. McCullum,” he said, out of breath, “good evening to you. Say, would you be kind enough to give me a hand?”

Who knew why he’d done it? Perhaps because even with the worst faith, he could not pretend Sean wasn’t doing good and had not slipped up so far; or perhaps because when he’d been twelve and first learned girls did nothing for him, it had been short, skinny slips of boys with rosaries in their book bags and thick Dublin accents that he’d fancied looking around him in class, and Sean was that old image all grown up. Like all men, Geoffrey had his weaknesses.

After that, Sean had made use of Geoffrey here and there when he needed him – never past what was reasonable, but to hold a board to fix a wall here, to prop up a tent there, to root out a rabid Skal another night.

“You turned my patrol of your place into an errand run, Skal,” Geoffrey remarked one time, as he plopped a sack of potatoes down on the ground of the warehouse by the stove.

“Well, I am grateful for your help, Mr. McCullum. But I must say, since you obviously don’t consider me much of a danger, if you would rather not be asked, you could’ve simply stopped coming by...”

It was always hard to tell when Sean was teasing, for it seemed quite antithetical to his gently earnest nature, but Geoffrey had definitely heard it in his tone there. He wasn’t wrong, either, the little Skal bastard.

“I guess I always liked the cheeky ones,” he said, watching Sean cut the potato sack open with a blunt knife.

Sean stopped to look at him, seemed to think to himself for a moment, then turned back to his work. “I must be fortunate,” he said softly.

And that answer, so unabashedly acknowledging Geoffrey’s off-hand flirting, had opened a whole different path Geoffrey had never even guessed existed, a trap door down a damn rabbit hole.

He’d tested the waters a little more over the following nights, brushing up against Sean, then waiting a moment to let him notice he was touching him deliberately, in much the same way you would briefly nudge a shy stray to test if it would run or bite before you petted it. Sean turned that thought around on him by eventually making a few bemused comments that Geoffrey apparently lacked attention – as if Geoffrey was the clingy dog –, but Sean also never leaned away.

One time, Sean sat him down to help him sort through a box of donated medication in his office. Geoffrey did and when they were finished looked up at Sean.

“What do I get for helping out?”

Sean cocked his head. It was not a question Geoffrey usually asked; he would rather gripe a bit and then do it regardless. “What do you want?”

“A kiss?” Geoffrey suggested, with a toothy grin.

Sean stared at him for a moment and Geoffrey was about to take it back when Sean got up from his chair and stooped where Geoffrey sat to press a small peck on his mouth, his lips cold and dry. Geoffrey fixed him with a hand in the back of his head and gave him a real kiss, and by the end of it Sean was halfway in his lap, breath hitching. Geoffrey picked him up like a doll and carried him over to the small, grey mattress in the back of the room, putting him face-down on it, running his hands up under his shirt and waist coat. Sean jittered like leaves in the wind, pushing into Geoffrey’s body pressed against his back.

Geoffrey had Sean suck his fingers, the wet noise going to his core, and fucked him just with the help of some of his own spit after he’d opened him up, their breeches still around their knees. Sean was like the string of a bow, all tension at first, twanging and shuddering like the overdrawn line, then suddenly releasing, collapsing into the bed. Geoffrey spilled inside him, digging his fingers into the meat of his arse, leaving red marks there and on his thighs.

Before he left, Geoffrey covered him with the blanket and placed a kiss on the nape of his neck while Sean was still gathering his breath and his senses.

-

The next time they met, Sean grew red in the face just looking at him and Geoffrey found it difficult not to laugh.

“Regretting your choices?” he asked, leaning against a pillar as he watched Sean shaking a deflated old pillow in some attempt to make it look presentable.

“No,” Sean said, quietly but clearly, slapping the pillow down on the hard mattress. “Just, ah...”

He never finished the sentence, simply shook his head, overwhelmed by the shame or the guilt, or so Geoffrey guessed, because he’d been a good Catholic boy once too, after all, hell knew how many years ago.

“In that case, you want to do it again?”

-

Their meetings quickly became a fixture in Geoffrey’s nights as much as passing by the shelter was. At times, when the carefully built structure of lies he had to keep up and standing around his guards became too much of a burden, when the eternal hunger was about to drive him insane, he would find release with Sean, like opening a valve to keep a pipe from bursting. Sean liked it rough, up against walls or over tables, with little care for the bruises and marks Geoffrey left, something he did increasingly on purpose. He didn’t complain when Geoffrey bit him on the neck and drained his blood and didn’t mind the claws that sometimes sprang from Geoffrey’s hands. In those few moments with Sean, he could be the creature he himself didn’t like to see himself as and would be wanted for it.

Sean did not give it to Geoffrey the same way the few times Geoffrey had been in the mood to let Sean lead. His own touch was gentle, almost careful. He prepared him until Geoffrey was snapping at him to go on and seemed to have made some pact with himself to kiss every inch of Geoffrey’s body whenever granted access in this way. Geoffrey was not the sort of man, as a rule, who made people think they had to pull the reins or keep their grip from bruising. He’d never wanted to be. Yet, he could not but admit that to lie with someone who seemed entirely unimpressed by his hard shell was interesting, if disquieting. Of course, he doubted that Sean was the kind of man who usually attracted people who wanted to fuck him until he whimpered and leave bloody scratches on his back, either.

Maybe they were exceptions for each other, but it wasn’t like Geoffrey really knew what Sean had gotten up to before he’d met Geoffrey, or why he even was with him. He never talked about sex and seemed embarrassed when Geoffrey did. His face, usually drawn into some soft frown or melancholy expression, would pull into a smile when he saw Geoffrey, though; that was all Geoffrey could really say he was doing for him.

-

Geoffrey loved the taste of blood. All leeches did, he supposed. It was hard to come to terms with still, but easier when he was distracted because he had his cock buried inside Sean. When Geoffrey scraped up his wrist on the cold, rough-stone wall of the warehouse that was tonight’s meeting place while bracing himself for a thrust, it seemed quite fair to wrap his arm around Sean’s neck and offer the raw patch of flesh to him. He’d taken a lot of it from him over the last weeks, after all.

Sean’s lips covered the wound. However, right away he tore his head away again, a twitching, compulsive motion.

“No,” he said, voice trembling, “no, please.”

His body was suddenly rigid, and Geoffrey stopped dead, pulling his arm back, dropping it down to his hip, because he knew otherwise the temptation would be there to drink and it was quite obvious Sean did not want to. When Sean did not relax, he wrapped his good hand around his jaw, turning his head around to kiss him.

“Alright,” he said firmly.

“Thank you, I’m sorry,” Sean breathed, halfway garbled, blood smeared over his lower lip. “Thank you.”

“Calm down.”

Sean nodded his head into Geoffrey’s hand, beard scraping over his palm. He let his weight sag against Geoffrey’s chest, into him, and some twinge went through Geoffrey he’d rather not think about, a ghost of pride that getting closer to him seemed to soothe Sean, like it mattered, like this was anything.

They finished off just a little more slowly than usual, Geoffrey’s arms tight around Sean’s middle and Sean’s hands gripping them hard. When Geoffrey released Sean to clean himself up and make himself presentable again, Sean turned around to him, tucking his shirt back into his trousers.

“I apologise, I didn’t mean to interrupt. Thank you for listening.”

“Will you stop? It’s getting sad.”

It had surprised him because Sean had never said ‘no’ before, not to anything, and it wasn’t like Geoffrey hadn’t put him through his paces. An offer of blood, he figured, wouldn’t be worth discussion to a vampire. But if Sean didn’t want it, he didn’t need to have it. What _Geoffrey_ decidedly didn’t need was someone wheedling about him for not pushing his will on them with sheer force alone.

“I’m sorry...”

Like a skipping record, that man.

“What manner of people were you fucking before me that this seems special to you?” Geoffrey asked, tightening his scarf around his neck.

Sean looked at him for a moment. “None,” he said.

This shut Geoffrey up for a moment. He had figured that Sean had probably taken lovers on the side before, away from his flock, because he had fallen so easily into the habit with Geoffrey. To think that he was the first man he’d picked out was odd; it begged the question why him, why now?

“Then it’s no wonder, I guess, if it was just the priest,” he muttered.

“You know about that?” Anger touched the disappointment in Sean‘s expression for a brief moment before he glanced at his shoes. “Of course you do. Everybody seems to.”

Geoffrey was silent because he could have only agreed, even if Sean would not like it. He’d heard it from some random gang member in the streets who was not likely to have Sean’s special trust. “How did that follow you from Dublin?”

“It was my own fault,” Sean said, with a sigh. “There used to be a church here, a couple of blocks down river. It’s been abandoned and deconsecrated for many years now, but it was still in use when I came. I figured it would be right to ease my mind by confessing, as I had learned. The priest spread it around.” He smiled thinly. “I don’t seem to have any luck with priests.”

Geoffrey could not but smile, though the humour was as dark as the night, and a touch of hopelessness accompanied Sean’s words.

“Can I ask why you don’t want the blood?”

Gently, Sean pulled at the sleeve of his jacket.

“I know the effect Ekon blood has on me. I think I would lose all semblance of sense if you added it on top of the rest of our play.”

From the tone of voice, Geoffrey could pick up that the thought frightened Sean. Granted, the idea that he could have Sean in his arms only held together by him, overstimulated to the point of half-madness, was tempting; but it required a level of giving up and giving in that would have kept him from it, too, were he Sean.

“That’s fine,” he said, again, to impress it on Sean’s mind, and perhaps because he looked so unsure, he took him in his arms. It would have been a normal gesture for a lover, but he was not Sean’s lover.

Sean stood still in his embrace for a moment, perhaps just as surprised as Geoffrey was by himself, then wrapped his arms around Geoffrey and leaned his head into the crook of Geoffrey’s neck. His quiet breath was soft and warm against his skin and Geoffrey let go off him quickly because otherwise he was worried he might not do it in a good while.

-

Geoffrey had lost sight of his men for a moment, checking on an abandoned flat, and when he found them again, they had Sean against a wall. They were down by the riverside close to the Turquoise Turtle, the pub that was the only other place aside from the shelter where the gangs and the union had an informal ceasefire agreement, according to Sean. However, since it was out of view at the banks, none of the guests inside would come help Sean now.

“Look, boss,” Tommy said, over his shoulder. “Have you ever seen a Skal like this?”

“Is that one, or are you just bugging a man with yellow fever?” Geoffrey asked, as nonchalantly as he could, strolling down the stairs. Sean looked up at him briefly, then quickly averted his gaze, perhaps to make sure his face showed nothing of their acquaintance.

“Must be. Look at his eyes. It’s not natural, that.”

Albert kept Sean pressed against the concrete wall, hand fisted in his shirt.

“I assure you, I don’t know what you are talking about,” Sean said, and Geoffrey thought he sounded careful to pronounce every word quite clearly, unlike the other unarticulate Skals.

Albert was a sharp one and Tommy a quick study. It made sense that they were able to identify a Skal that was so different from all his brethren. Geoffrey cursed silently. Couldn’t Sean have chosen a different route to walk tonight?

But of course, he could fix this – easily, if not for the weight on his conscience.

“Albert, Tommy,” he demanded, and he could hear the power in his own voice brimming. Reid was an exceptionally strong vampire and as his progeny, Geoffrey had some powers that other leeches could only dream of. The two men turned to him.

“This is not a Skal, it’s a man struck with some sickness,” he said, and even as he spoke, he noticed the tell-tale slackness in their faces as he pushed into their brains. “You are done patrolling the East End Docks. Neither of you wants to come back here. You’d rather go to Whitechapel, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, Whitechapel,” Albert said, letting go off Sean’s shirt.

“Whitechapel,” Tommy repeated, like a toddler.

“You should go there now. The graveyard is still stuffed with feral Skals who need you attention. I will take care of this.”

Albert and Tommy scuttled up the stairs and away, lit by the dim shine coming from a few dusty windows, as Geoffrey and Sean watched.

“Thank you,” Sean said quietly, when they had turned the street corner.

Geoffrey didn’t answer. He had saved Sean by putting a seed of doubt into the heads of some of his brightest hunters. Was it this he regretted, or that he had raised up men who walked up to peaceful people in the streets ready to cut their heads off and tear their hearts out?

“Keep to the broad streets so you don’t get in trouble,” he told Sean before walking off himself.

-

Geoffrey could feel the sunlight on his skin like boiling hot water. He ducked under the shade of a rusted balcony and rushed from there into the shadow of the wall that surrounded the old Dawson & Dawson warehouse. The gate of the night asylum was open, but the walk up to the door would be torture. The tents pitched around the yard couldn’t offer him much protection from the sun.

Well, it was Geoffrey’s own fault. He should have kept time in mind instead of tracking that beast through the sewers until the late hours of morning. He hadn’t found it and staying down there with it ready to surprise him was not an option, so here he was, having to beg shelter like Sean’s homeless customers, and get scorched before doing so. But in the end, it was only pain. Carl had once conducted a test where he’d let a vampire burn down to the bones from sunlight and they had come back from it.

Geoffrey sprinted forward, gritting his teeth. When he pushed the doors open, his skin was cracking and crumbling away like ash, but it settled some as he fell forward into the blessed darkness.

It was emptier inside than usual. The sick were left, but the others had probably puttered off to work their underpaid jobs or get drunk in a pub. Geoffrey slammed the door shut and took a deep breath before he walked over to the office door and banged against it with his first.

For how often he had fucked Sean, only once had been in a bed, and therefore he had never seen him in his sleeping clothes. He was barefoot, wearing a long-sleeved shirt in washed-out blue and old sailor’s trousers too wide for him, his feet bare. The way he blinked at him showed Geoffrey he had probably already been asleep. It was a little endearing.

“Geoffrey?” he asked, stepping backwards to let him in.

“Spent too long underground, got caught out. Can I stay here for the day?”

“Yes, sure. I just have the one bed, so if you want some peace and quiet, you’ll have to share with me. You can sleep outside on the ground if that suits you better, but it can get loud around noon,” he said, voice carefully blank, obviously trying to keep Geoffrey’s options open. Geoffrey would have done it the same way. Theirs was not a relationship that necessarily included sharing a bed to sleep.

Of course, both options weren’t good because both options left him sleeping close to someone and Geoffrey avoided doing that. He liked to keep the respect people had for him intact, but when asleep, he had no control over his mind. That was when the Western front came back with bursting shells and severed limbs, and images of his father with his mouth bloody, of slaughtered families, crazed bloodsuckers, and lately, all those begging, gentle, supposedly innocent leeches, the ones he’d killed just in case and was not so sure about now. He dealt with it, shoving it all back into the box it kept escaping after he got up; but when he slept, it was fitfully, with trashing, kicking, sometimes screaming, because then the whole bloody circus was unfettered in his head.

“Your bed if it doesn’t bother you.”

Less of an audience, if it should come to it. Perhaps he’d be lucky, anyway. Though he doubted he could keep himself awake today, sometimes such deep exhaustion meant he would sleep like a stone.

“Not at all.”

Sean trudged back to the mattress, limbs heavy as he fell down on it, pushing close to the wall. Geoffrey took off his coat and boots and weapons before he laid down by his side. Sean dragged the blanket over both of them. It was warm from his body, soft despite its obvious age. As Sean went back to sleep, breath evening out, Geoffrey stared at the ceiling, trying to think of where to track the beast next, an upcoming delivery of ammunition, the initiation for some recruits from the West End. Before he’d had time to concentrate on one of these thoughts, he had slipped away.

-

It was a gentle shake of his shoulder that took him from Carl’s last battlefield, crouching over the mutilated corpse, taken down by an Ekon up in Glasgow. She had left a clear declaration of war to Carl’s followers by spreading his organs and bones all over the room, leaving the shell of his skin a scooped-out hull. Carl had killed her maker; that scene had only been a little less bloody.

Geoffrey woke up breathing hard, nauseous from the smell, tears in his eyes, which he’d fought down when he had found Carl back then, on account of there being other hunters around him, but which he now felt wet on his cheeks. Cursing, he sat up, wiping his face with his sleeve.

“Geoffrey?” Sean asked softly.

“It’s nothing,” he rasped.

That hand was still on his shoulder, firm and gentle. It felt good, which made him want to shake it off. As a rule, it was best not to learn to rely on comfort that would just go away eventually. His whole body felt like a coiled spring, ready to flip, but the drag of Sean’s thumb against his arm seemed to unwind it slowly, disarm it.

“It was just a dream,” Geoffrey said. Of course it hadn’t been. It was a memory, one of the many in which he stood eternally, night after night, captured and lead-limbed.

“What kind of dream?”

“Who cares? There’s a thousand like it. Not the worst I’ve had, not the best, obviously.” He shook his head violently like a dog coming out of the water. “It’s all in my mind, so it doesn’t matter.”

Finally unable to bear having just this little bit of a touch, if there had to be some, he grabbed Sean’s hand and turned, forcing him down onto the mattress with his own weight. He wanted him closer, but there was just one way he had to ask that, and so he pushed up Sean’s shirt.

“Ah – now?” Sean asked, uncertain.

Geoffrey crashed their mouths together. After a moment, Sean’s hands came up to his face, cupping it. He took the bite out of the kiss and slowed it down until it was a caress. This was doing nothing to help Geoffrey stop the tears, but he succumbed to it, the soft stroke of his tongue, the tender hand running up into his hair.

“God damn you,” Geoffrey said into Sean’s mouth.

Sean smiled a little.

“What did you dream of?”

“Carl Eldritch,” Geoffrey said, his arms bracketing Sean’s head where he laid. “He raised me after my family was murdered. He died spread out over a whole hotel room, his heart stuck on the sword of a little Greek statue on the mantelpiece. That leech had fun with it.” His head hung between his shoulders. “And he deserved it, probably, for he’d done similar things to his enemies. As have I.”

“No one deserves to be disrespected in death,” Sean said quietly. “Revenge is understandable, but it’s not justice. Besides, you have changed much lately. A year ago, could you have imagined sleeping with a Skal? Saving him from your men?”

“No. A year ago, I had very little mercy.” His fingers tightened in Sean’s short, tousled strands. They were whispering, a conversation just for them, their faces barely two hands apart. “Atonement is a pretty idea. I have done some things that I don’t think I can come back from, though.”

“Like what?”

Geoffrey looked down at the sun-golden eyes. More than any finger-wagging dogmatic or beautiful bible passage, they tempted him to confession.

“I killed my brother. I have no idea if he had ever taken anyone’s life. I did as Carl told me to. He was a leech, after all, and he was my responsibility. What if he killed someone like my father had killed my mother? I couldn’t risk it.”

“I’m sorry. What was his name?”

“Ian.”

He saw Ian’s smiling face before him now as he picked him up and lifted him up on his shoulders, Geoffrey hollering and cheering his big brother on. Shaking his head, he chased the image away. It would fall apart soon again into bloody memories.

“Am I more of a monster now, or was I then?” Geoffrey mused, grimly.

Sean moved his head a little, pillow shifting under it.

“You can’t change the past, but you still have a future.”

“Ian doesn’t.”

“And you can’t help that now,” Sean said firmly. “You did what you thought woudl save lives. But you can help other people who are haunted by monsters now, too, and spare those of us who don’t deserve death.”

“And I have the wisdom to tell which is which?”

Lately, it felt like he knew nothing at all.

“I trust in you.”

Geoffrey snorted, hand pulling slightly at Sean’s hair again, a gesture not without affection. “But what do you know about sin, saint? The worst you’ve done in your life is probably spread your legs for me and that’s really not much in the way of wickedness.”

Sean smiled, but it did not reach his eyes.

“You do not know the inside of my head.”

“So tell me,” Geoffrey demanded.

“And then what?” Sean answered. “Then you won’t want to lie with me anymore. What else do I have but my pretend sainthood?”

Kindness, and softness, and a good heart. Geoffrey was no child. He knew that a man who had been so ill treated by life had to know of rage and hopelessness..

“Say it,” he murmured against Sean’s mouth. _Show yourself to me like I had to show myself to you._

Sean remained quiet for a long time. “There is a man who sleeps here most nights, Dyson Delaney. Some years ago, I saved him from drowning.”

“Oh, very sinful,” Geoffrey answered, voice dripping with sarcasm.

“You didn’t let me finish. I still let him sleep here. I still talk to him. But he drives me mad. He’s given up on himself, totally, utterly. All he cares about is drinking. Sometimes I look at him and think... why did I save you? I caught a bad sickness spending that night, wet and cold, caring for him. I almost died. And for what? So he could continue wasting his life away? What is even the point of him being alive?” Sean swallowed. Colour had risen to his cheeks, with anger or shame. “I’m wrong, of course. Every life is precious and if I can’t reach him, it’s my failure. Still, those are things I think sometimes. And my mind has not grown to be a brighter place lately.” He exhaled. “It’s – it’s hard. My body aches and bleeds every waking moment, and I have to lie so much. I used to be able to keep myself standing up with just the grace of God to preserve me. Now...”

He trailed his hand down Geoffrey’s chest.

“What am I?” Geoffrey asked, looking at a scratch he’d left on Sean’s neck some night ago. “Your punishment?”

“No, nothing like that. Just my vice.” 

That was better. It sounded like something that gave Sean some manner of peace, even if it came laced with guilt. 

“I chide Dyson for his drinking, but I rely on something, too,” Sean murmured. “I’m a hypocrite.”

Well no, he was no angel, Geoffrey thought. He seemed so shattered and small beneath him right now. But wasn’t the hurt what made a real saint? He’d been Catholic, too, once upon a time. He knew how important the bleeding was.

Slowly, he lowered the weight of his body down on Sean.

“Good try, but you’re still an altar boy.”

Sean chuckled weakly and took him in his arms. It was how Geoffrey fell asleep again, head nestled against Sean’s shoulder, the rise and fall of his breath under him.

-

“Thank you for this. I hesitate to ask my human assistants here to touch those inflicted with worse disease.”

Sean spread the blanket over the woman Geoffrey had helped him carry over to this bed in the corner, where the draught from the door opening and closing would not touch her. She looked frail, her wrinkled skin like paper, and Geoffrey doubted she’d make it through the day, but he knew Sean wanted her to be comfortable, anyway.

“Don’t mention it.”

Sean gave the woman a last glance before he looked up at Geoffrey.

“How are you?”

Though Geoffrey knew he should have expected the question, he didn’t much like it regardless. It was normal that Sean would worry, especially since he was always fussing about people, anyway. But what kind of man would Geoffrey be if he admitted he needed a warm body to hold on to so he could even fall asleep properly?

“Look, I’ve handled this for years, decades. I’ll be fine.”

“I’m sure. I just wondered if I could help.”

“No. Unless you wish to sleep in a Priwen hide-out where at any moment another hunter could walk in, just to get woken up by me six times during the day,” Geoffrey said, rough on purpose. He had never liked pity. He liked it less from a man who had somehow drilled his way through his skull and taken up residence there in the back of his thoughts. And yet, he had slept better with Sean’s arms around him; and in the days after, when he was alone again, he had sorely missed the feeling of startling awake and noticing Sean’s hand slip into his to squeeze it.

Sean shook his head. “Wait for me,” he said.

Geoffrey did, watching him vanish into the office and reappear after a brief moment. He held a small iron key to him.

“There is a back entrance to the shelter. It leads through an old boiler room which has a door connecting it to my office. I keep it unlocked since the only way to get into the room is from the outside with this key, and only I have them.” He put the key in Geoffrey’s hand. “My flock wouldn’t wonder about your coming or going if you sneaked in like that. Perhaps if the sun ever catches you unawares again...” He paused, now a little unsure himself. “I wouldn’t mind some company, either.”

 _I guess he’s braver than me_ , Geoffrey thought. He hadn’t been able to admit to as much.

-

For a few days and nights, he carried the key with him, not using it, but always making sure it was with the other few belongings he did not let out of his sight, like his crossbow and his sword. He slept no worse than usual, but usual was not good, and while before it had simply been a vexing reality of his life, temptation now laid in the East End.

On a Sunday, he finally broke down. He hadn’t seen Sean all week, anyway, being occupied with a rogue Ekon in Westminster, and he wanted his quiet words, the press of his body, his pale smile and his presence next to him, warm and solid, after so many nights spent wading through corpses and snapping frightened guards back into line.

The back entrance was to the riverside. Geoffrey locked it behind himself and walked past cold brass boilers to the other side of the room, pushing the door to the office open. Sean, already in bed, had his face turned to the wall. A tattered bible laid by the side of his mattress, black colour faded from too many touches. He winced when the mattress shifted under Geoffrey’s weight, quickly raising his head with a panicked look. Geoffrey scolded himself for being stupid enough not to remember that perhaps Sean had bad memories of men climbing into his bed uninvited. Quietly, he whispered his name into Sean’s ear, and, after a quick exhale, Sean smiled at him over his shoulder. Geoffrey kissed him, hugged him, and pushed his hand down the front of Sean’s trousers.

It was a comfortable rhythm to fall into. Whenever he did not wish to be alone with his thoughts and was close-by, he came to Sean in the morning. Sometimes he was still awake and they spoke before heading for his bed; sometimes he was already dead asleep, and Geoffrey took care to shake him awake before he joined him now. Either way they fucked, because Geoffrey could not get enough of him, and, on occasion, because it was a good reason to say to have come over for. Afterwards, they slept lying close. Sean never complained about being woken up when Geoffrey had a worse nightmare, or speak about God and death and the world at one in the afternoon with sunlight winking under the office door; but most times, when Geoffrey woke silently, but in a cold sweat, it was enough to latch on to a sleeping Sean again to calm his racing heart.

One morning, Geoffrey began to work on the buttons of Sean’s shirt when Sean captured his hands.

“I’m sorry, I’ve been up all day yesterday, too, I can barely keep my eyes open. In the evening?”

So Geoffrey didn’t always fuck Sean anymore if he was weary himself, since Sean did not complain when he simply came to his bed to sleep. Now, he ended up there pretty much whenever he was close enough to the East End by the end of the night to justify it. Sometimes Sean would still be up, bustling around his office or the asylum, and Geoffrey might help him with a belligerent drunk or fighting unionists and gang members, then round the house to slip in undetected again through the back. He also loved stretching out on the mattress watching Sean mend old clothes or work on his desk going over donation sheets until his focus faded, because of tiredness or because Geoffrey was goading him to join him. But it was just as nice simply to tease Sean’s ticklish sides until he woke and then fit himself against his back to fall back asleep with him, Sean welcoming him with eyes half-closed and sleep-heavy touches.

His hunters, the ones who’d been around long enough to usually know where Geoffrey stayed, started to joke that the boss had a girl waiting for him somewhere and he told them to mind their own bloody business with a bit of a smile, which had by now convinced most of those who cared that they were right, as Geoffrey had hoped it would.

-

“You’re late tonight.”

Sean looked up from the wooden box full of vegetables by which he knelt. Geoffrey acknowledged his words with a curt nod.

“Trouble in Whitechapel.”

“Did anyone get hurt?”

“Not too bad. It wasn’t maggots digging up the graves we found, in the end, just grave-robbers. Shooed them off, anyway.”

“Well, that might not be the worst thing. Though it’s sad to see people stoop so low. With food being so scarce now after the war, it’s no wonder.”

Geoffrey fell down on a chair.

“Come now, look around you. You know the war has nothing to do with what some of these people do. There have been crooks around long before the it stated.”

“Oh, there are always reasons they end up that way,” Sean answered, vaguely. “Nevertheless, I’m happy these ones won’t be disturbing sacred earth for a while now, as it’s always quite a shock to the poor grieving families and friends. I imagine you probably gave them quite a fright...”

Geoffrey grinned. Sean knew him too well.

“You’re cooking?” he asked. “Isn’t it too late?”

At this point, he knew when Sean handed out food at the shelter. The Skal’s schedule was a faint net clamped under his own plans, something he paid more attention to than he realised most times.

“Just planning for tomorrow. A grocer gave me some wares he reckons he can’t sell anymore, but most of its is just a bit dodgy.” Sean hesitated, rolling a sweet-smelling apple with a couple of brown marks in his hands. “Although, I have to say, since you said you’d be busy up north I did not expect you tonight. I... well, I may have to feed before I go to bed.”

Feed, Geoffrey knew, meant going down to the basement where Sean kept the corpses until they could be brought to the mass graves. He did not like doing it in front of Geoffrey and since the hunger did not take him like an Ekon because of the cure administered by Reid, Sean avoided it until he was sure not to meet him for a while. “I don’t want you to taste flesh on my lips,” he had confessed, once. While Sean had expressed to him that he was quite happy his own hunger could be stilled without violence, Geoffrey could not fault him for not finding much pleasure in the knowledge that he would have to chew rotten flesh, probably from someone he’d known, too. His mind was still human, after all.

“What if you drink from me?” Geoffrey offered. He was freshly fed on a beast last night and it would spare Sean the indignity of digging through one of his dead flock for parts. “Didn’t you say you weren’t hungry for a month after Reid gave you blood? I’m an Ekon, too, and not a much weaker one than him. I know you didn’t want to do it while I was fucking you, but I can even drain it in a glass if you like. Make it clean.”

Sean stopped turning the apple in his hands. 

“What?” Geoffrey asked, at his long stare.

“Oh, well, I... I actually, I had been thinking about that, and at this point, I wouldn’t mind both, I suppose.”

Though Sean had joined with some enthusiasm into a lot of rough and dirty acts, Geoffrey had still never actually heard him talk of sex– especially not of something he wanted, imagined, and, if the guilty look in his eyes could be interpreted, perhaps had even fantasised about. Just the thought got Geoffrey a bit hot under the collar.

“What changed your mind?”

“You,” Sean said, after a moment’s hesitation. “When you first offered your wrist, I did not know you as well as I do now. Having learned what kind of man you are, I am certain you would handle me well when I am not quite in possession of my senses.”

This touched on another thing neither of them had spoken out loud of; the shift they had made, one stumbling step after the other, from two near-strangers rutting in abandoned buildings to two men huddling together in bed every second day.

It was also the sweetest damned thing anyone had said to him in a long time.

“You can trust me,” Geoffrey said, meaning it.

Sean nodded his head. He raised to his feet, putting the apple aside, and slowly advanced on Geoffrey, who still sat in the chair, leaning back, legs spread. He let Sean step between them, grabbed him by the thighs, fingers digging in deep. Sean hugged Geoffrey’s head tightly to his chest before backing off enough to bend down for a kiss.

They moved over to the bed intertwined, grabbing and mouthing at each other.

“Clothes off,” Geoffrey demanded.

“You too,” Sean gave back, two gentle words as good as any command to Geoffrey when spoken with that slightly breathless voice.

They sank naked onto the bed. The heating was never great in the asylum, but the days were milder now, so Geoffrey did not feel the need to pull the blanket over their bodies. Sitting on his hips, Sean was twitchy and restless, stroking his fingers down Geoffrey’s chest and stomach and up again, holding on to his shoulders.

“You’re sure about this?” Geoffrey pushed.

Sean nodded his head.

“Right.”

Twisting to reach into the folds of his discarded breeches, Geoffrey pulled out a small dagger which he carried just in case and raised it to his throat.

“Won’t I drink at your wrist?” Sean asked, surprised.

“No. This is better. You can really feel the pulse.”

And fuck him if he’d ever thought he’d be giving a leech advice on how to have fun sucking blood, much less be mad enough to offer him his own throat for it. This was Sean, though. It was different.

Gently, he cradled the back of his neck and pulled him closer, urged Sean to latch on to the small cut he’d made on his neck.

“Stop me if it gets too much. I don’t know if I’ll be able to,” Sean breathed against his skin.

“I’ve got you,” Geoffrey just said.

He wouldn’t let Sean get hurt or let him hurt anyone, including Geoffrey, not because he feared the pain, but because he knew it would hit Sean deeper than to nurse bruises himself.

Sean’s lips closed around the wound. The first touch was rather tender, a gentle nudge of his tongue, barely pulling blood. Then the taste would spread through Sean’s mouth, Geoffrey knew, who wasn’t a Skal but had felt the heady rush of drinking blood, and moderation would be hard to come by. Sure enough, Sean latched on properly with a small, muffled huff. His thighs around Geoffrey’s hips drew tighter together, his fingers clawed into his shoulders as he drank in earnest. Geoffrey had at times had feral Skals jump on him to feed and it seemed a reflex for the creatures to cling on until they were shaken off like oversized ticks. For that thought alone it should have bothered him, but his mind filled with the noises Sean made, deep in the back of his throat, unreserved and wanton, and he felt him hard against his stomach, hips moving to get friction with no thought to shame, and Geoffrey’s flight instinct did not kick in. Foolish, he thought, running his fingers through Sean’s short hair, before he finally convinced himself to grab a handful of it and pull him off with a sharp yank backwards.

Blood dripped over Sean’s lips and chin and onto his chest. Geoffrey caught some of it on his thumb, pushed it back into Sean’s mouth, and watched with fascination as he sucked greedily on the finger. He pulled it out slowly, enjoying the drag of soft, wet lips on his skin.

“Geoffrey...”

To his surprise, Sean laughed. It was a soft but easy sound of the kind he very rarely gave way to.

“You’re out of it,” Geoffrey said, amused, but before the last word was quite over his lips, Sean had pushed their mouths together. The quiet intensity with which he nipped at Geoffrey’s lips and touched his chest was all him, just unhampered by his usual inhibition, and when Geoffrey put his hands on Sean’s skin, he winced, but with a moan, leaning into Geoffrey’s palms.

Pressing his advantage, Geoffrey dragged his hands up, finding Sean’s nipples. They were sensitive at the worst of times, but now Sean writhed when he dragged his thumbs roughly across them. His gaze was unfocused, feverish.

“More?” Geoffrey asked.

Sean made a noise of approval, but Geoffrey kept him hanging, gently rolling one hard nub between his fingertips.

“You’ve got to answer.”

He was teasing now.

“Geoffrey, please,” Sean tried, and when Geoffrey twisted his nipple a little, just to the edge of pain, he was gagging on his next plea. God, that Ekon blood had certainly done a number on him.

“Because you asked pretty,” Geoffrey said, adjusting the seat of his own cock with one hand. This sight, with the feeling of Sean’s naked body writhing on top of him, was not something he would be able to watch idly for long.

Geoffrey groped for the small flask Sean kept squeezed between the wall and the mattress. However, Sean was faster than him, pulling it from his hands to spill too much oil over his palm. He turned to reach behind himself, fisting Geoffrey’s cock. The slide of his calloused hand was harsh against the skin and devilishly good, and before Geoffrey could think anything, Sean was already positioning himself.

When Sean sank down on him, as deep as his body would allow, he moaned so loudly that Geoffrey had to reach up to cover his mouth with his hand. God knew he wanted to hear it, but the rest of the asylum didn’t need to know Sean was getting railed by what they thought to be just another random gang thug he’d befriended.

Geoffrey hauled himself up to get a better angle for keeping his hand clamped over Sean’s mouth. This did not distract Sean from plunging himself down on Geoffrey’s hard length. He seemed to be coming apart at the seams, all loose limbs, wordless noises, body wracked with shudders. Geoffrey guided his hips with his free hand, petting him, a gentle gesture that seemed to leave fire in Sean’s skin, making him cringe forward into the touch, hands grasping at Geoffrey in a silent plea for more. Geoffrey had a feeling if he’d touch Sean’s straining cock, the poor man would pass out in his lap, so instead he went for his nipple again. This sent a shock through Sean, yanking him upright even as he pushed down on Geoffrey, and his seed landed on Geoffrey’s chest and stomach.

Geoffrey pulled him into his arms. Sean shook like the ground after an earthquake would shiver with after-shocks when Geoffrey pushed up into him. His hole was tight, the muscles spasming with the rest of his body, yet Sean gave appreciate murmurs when Geoffrey thrust up, and Geoffrey needed very little to come with his lover draped over him like this. When he reached his peak, he felt Sean cling to him harder, and they seemed melted for a moment, one tense, gasping body.

Sean kept hanging over his shoulder until Geoffrey realised he had probably dozed off. Carefully, he slid out of him and laid him down on the matttress, groping for his own old shirt by the bedside to clean him up with – he had clothes to change into in Sean’s office now, already, since a few weeks, because it just made sense to store them here. As he dragged the cloth over his skin, it came down on him like a ton of bricks that Sean had willingly put his pleasure and safety in Geoffrey’s hands, even after life had given him the cruel lesson of how little some people could be trusted with responsibility for the defenceless.

He had just settled in beside him when Sean woke with a start. For the role reversal, Geoffrey found himself briefly amused. He caught his hand.

“Back again?” he asked.

“Yes...”

Sean curled his fingers around Geoffrey’s and took a deep breath, looking at the ceiling.

“And? Was it what you hoped for?”

“It was... more than I thought it could be,” Sean said slowly. “I didn’t realise my mind would be so focused, but it was like my whole world collapsed into you. I could barely think straight, especially not with your hands on me.”

“You kind of acted like you’d had one cheap whiskey bottle on an empty stomach,” Geoffrey said, with a brief quirk of his lips.

Sean looked embarrassed, but pleased despite himself. “I’ve never been so single-minded before, except, at times, in prayer, and now I feel almost as light and free as I do after speaking to the Lord,” he murmured, looking a little disturbed for the fact. Geoffrey had to laugh. “Thank you for indulging me,” Sean finished, after a moment of contemplating his own blasphemous realisation.

“Whenever you need it, saint, I’ll be there.”

Sean pulled Geoffrey’s hand to his mouth and kissed his knuckles and Geoffrey thought into the truth of his answer. Yes, he would be there, because God knew he wasn’t going to leave. He didn’t think he could, at this point. That didn’t scare him as it should, but if there was ever a person who could be trusted to hold Geoffrey’s heart in his hand, it was Sean.


End file.
